Six Month Update

I know I’ve been a total slacker in keeping up with this blog. Not only have I been posting less frequently, I feel like I’ve let “you” (whoever YOU are reading this) down in terms of content and quality. HowEVER, I never really set forth any sort of mission statement or specific production goals, so never mind that sentiment. This blog’s very essence is a testament to my state of being at this phase in my life: random, disjointed, roller-coaster-rific. 

Organization was always the hardest part of essay writing for me in school anyway.

I thought I ought to document a little more about my surrogacy “journey” at this mid-pregnancy moment. I’m like 6-ish months along right now and everything looks good. It’s a girl. I’m sure the intended parents are “over the moon” (the customary and apparently only permitted phrase used to indicate happiness or excitement in the surrogate world), but it’s hard to know their specific moon proximity from emails that come every twenty days or so. They’re very busy people. And probably guarded about getting too close, which is fine, and totally understandable, but…it is odd going through a pregnancy with zero excitement. I’m excited on principle—that the pregnancy is going well and all—but obviously there isn’t the anticipation of bringing home a baby or anything. And since I don’t talk on the phone with the parents, there’s not really anyone to squeal excitedly with.

The parents are coming out here next month to attend an ultrasound, have the hospital tour and discuss our birth plan. I’m totally nervous about it because we haven’t seen them since LAST summer when we first met them, and that was in a supervised environment, like having a chaperone on a date. So that will be nice and awkward.

I’m watching Brother Bear 2 right now. Just put the kids down for nap and here I am, still watching the movie. I want to know if Kenai’s girlfriend is gonna turn into a bear, of course. Kids are surprisingly quiet for two little people who were still quite energetic a few minutes ago. It is so freaking windy outside, shaking the house with its fall-y-ness. I just had a bowl of cereal (my third since last night’s midnight breakfast of champions, aka Wheaties). Baby girl is kicking. I want to take a nap, but also need a shower, but also need to work on my painting…I don’t bother throwing exercise in the suggested pile of activities at this point. Same story different day.

I started the first in a series of pregnancy-related body image paintings last month but lost my momentum after I finished the underpainting, as I often do. I want to get one done each month, but self-imposed deadlines are way too easy to ignore. Plus there’s a few Christmas doggie portrait commissions on the horizon, and the nakey exhibit isn’t until next fall. 

At least I can stick it to the little boy about actually making art now. Sort of. 

A little while back, Dirt asked me what a studio was. I told him it was a place where creative people make things: music, art, movies, etc. He then asked, “Are we creative people?” I told him yes. Something to the effect of “You are very smart, imaginative, creative people. You are such good artists too, with your drawing and painting!” Without skipping a beat, he said “You’re not.” A tad taken aback, I asked him why he would say that, and he replied, matter-of-factly, “Well, Mom, you just never draw.” POW! Way to call me out on never doing art, son. But now he has to deal with my nude drawings, even though he told me I need to put a bra on them.

The end of this movie is totally making me cry. Not sure if I can blame it on preggy hormones, but that’s what I’m going with anyway. I called it, by the way. Girlfriend is turning into a bear. Also, I was wrong about at least one kid actually being asleep; Dirt just emerged, naked, eagerly asking me to check out his recent potty deposit. “Is that a huge pile?” (If you must know, the answer was yes.)

Do you know one frustrating way to spend an hour? Trying to take a nap with a little boy who says he just wants to cuddle but then is all wiggly and chatty and when you get stern with him and try to send him back to his room he runs off crying and says you hurt his feelings cuz he just loves you and wants to snuggle you so you end up feeling like a big ol’ meanie and got no actual nap at all. And the pointy-nosed dog keeps poking you with his pointy wet nose cuz he’s needy and shooing him away makes you feel even more like a big ol’ meanie.

Sooooo the husband is on a week-long hunting trip and I’m left to fend for us alone, keeping the kids, dogs, and horses fed. For the human variety, I stocked up on frozen dinners and mac’n’cheese (and cereal, as usual). I am enjoying the fact that the house stays fairly clean in his absence, but I am bored, and feel even more boring than usual in terms of hanging out with the kids. All I can say is, I’d better get a freezer full of delicious elk meat after being abandoned with all the beasts while 6 months pregnant.

“In other news” (as I’m prone to say), I swapped out one part-time art job for another in recent months. The great little local studio where I was working closed because the rural folk couldn’t appreciate its awesomeness, and sadly, the owner couldn’t garner enough business to stay open. So, now I’m working a little closer to Denver teaching painting classes to non-artist boozers. Kidding. But not really. It’s one of those “paint and sip” studios. They also have clay and glass art classes, as well as a whole separate area for kid stuff. It’s a super cool place too, and although the paintings are often overly simplistic and I get tired of reassuring patrons that they’re doing well, the people I work with are great and it’s really pretty fun. After I got over the awkward performance factor and learned how not to fall off the little stage, of course. (Don’t worry, B, surely I’m still plenty awkward to those who know me. Especially when I have to use the silly little microphone.) 

Although I loved the quiet solitude and private lesson setup at the other studio, the more social aspect of this job is excellent—especially considering the lack of adult interaction a prairie-dwelling stay-at-home mom typically gets. And once I’m done being pregnant I can even enjoy a beer while working, which I look forward to. More than you know. 

Speaking of pregnant (yes we’re back to that…see how outstanding my organization is?), you know what I hate? People telling me “You don’t even look pregnant!” I suppose they see it as a compliment of sorts, but seriously. That just means I look fat normally. If this belly does not even look pregnant, then that sucks for me. Cuz it’s plenty round. 

I actually got maternity pants this time around and I have no idea how I got by without them in my other two pregnancies. Really low-waisted and/or unbuttoned pants all the time?? I remember purchasing a single pair of pants at Motherhood (maternity store), and never ever wearing them cuz they were atrocious. Instead of the “full/extended panel” coverage I am currently so fond of, I couldn’t commit and got the half belly type, which is just a wide elastic band at the top of normalish pants ("demi panel"), causing both muffin top and hip puffage. Like putting a rubber band around a marshmallow. But now I’m totally digging the kind that goes all the way up to your armpits. 

The other day I took all our old baby stuff to the consignment store, with sudden OCD flourish. Dooley was cleaning out the garage (after two failed attempts in the past few months, and now we can see the floor and walk through without hopping over an obstacle course of black widow-infested hurdles), which prompted me to drag all things baby out of the basement and whisk them immediately away. I couldn’t even take the time to list them on Craigslist or think for two seconds if we know anyone that wants them. They. Had. To. Go. Now. Thankfully handling it that way didn’t allow for too much sentimentality, but it is a little bittersweet. I think I’ve accepted that two kids is more than I can handle anyway, and I’m anxious to see what I can do with myself once these guys are in school. 

[Incidentally, Dirt started part-time preschool, which he says he hates, but you can’t trust a four-year-old. I just hate having to get up in the morning to take him there. He is equally bad at mornings, and it’s really hard to motivate for something that no one likes. Allegedly. And it’s stupidly only three hours long. He can write his name now, though it doesn’t seem like he’s taking advantage of the socialization factor like we thought he would; in fact, our loud, crazy boy apparently turns into the shyest thing that ever was when he’s at school. Weeeiiirrrrd.]

Anyway, I wondered to myself, as I hauled in the bouncer and changing table and high chair, if the consignment clerks were wondering to themselves why a pregnant person would purge her baby items. Then I thought they probably think that I “don’t even look pregnant”. Those jerks. 


Now excuse me while I go outside and attempt to throw a pile of hay over a fence as tall as me in the cold hurricaney wind and get tons of itchy bits in my bra, then come back inside to clean up poo that has a stench so powerful it is filling the house but I don't want to open the windows because it's cold and windy.